Indian rescuers have safely brought out all 41 workers from a collapsed Himalayan road tunnel after a marathon 17-day engineering operation to free them, a minister has said.
"I am completely relieved and happy as 41 trapped labourers in the Silkyara Tunnel Collapse have been successfully rescued," road transport minister Nitin Gadkari said in a statement.
"This was a well-coordinated effort by multiple agencies, marking one of the most significant rescue operations in recent years," he said.
The evacuation of the men to safety began more than six hours after rescuers broke through to end an ordeal that began early on 12 November when the tunnel caved in.
"The first one is out," a rescue official told reporters outside the 4.5km tunnel in the northern state of Uttarakhand.
Ambulances with their lights flashing lined up at the mouth of the tunnel to transport the workers to a hospital about 30 km away.
The men have been getting food, water, light, oxygen and medicines through a pipe but efforts to dig a tunnel to rescue them with high-powered drilling machines were frustrated by a series of snags.
The tunnel is part of the $1.5 billion Char Dham highway, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's most ambitious projects, aimed at connecting four Hindu pilgrimage sites through an 890km network of roads.
Authorities have not said what caused the cave-in but the region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods.
Rajput Rai, a drilling expert, told the Press Trust of India that three-person teams were taking turns working at the rock face inside a metal pipe, just wide enough for someone to squeeze through.
While one worker drilled, a second scooped up the rubble by hand, and the third placed it on a wheeled trolley to be pulled out, Mr Rai said, according to PTI's report.
The workers were seen alive for the first time last Tuesday, peering into the lens of an endoscopic camera sent by rescuers down a thin pipe through which air, food, water and electricity are being delivered.
"Our only source of strength is God, as it is the last hope for us," said mother-of-three Musarrat Jahan, whose husband Mohd Sabah Ahmad is a migrant worker trapped inside.
"We have more faith in God than anything", she told AFP by phone from her home in the eastern state of Bihar, one of India's poorest.
The tunnel is being constructed between the remote towns of Silkyara and Dandalgaon in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.
It is part of the €1.3bn Char Dham highway, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's most ambitious projects, aimed at connecting four Hindu pilgrimage sites through an 890km network of roads.
Authorities have not said what caused the cave-in, but the region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods.
